New York Portrait

1970

The woman in New York Portrait reclines on an armchair, her posture relaxed and sexually self-assured. The grid pattern appearing throughout the scene coupled with the transparency of her dress and the window create an ambiguous sense of space that makes it difficult to distinguish interior from exterior. Together the skyline prominently visible in the background and the title of the work present the possibility that Susan Hall meant this not as a portrait set in New York but as a portrait of the city itself, or perhaps the city as epitomized by one of its uninhibited, youthful denizens.